Us... and Them

It occurs to me that for probably the first time in recorded history, adults and children are listening to the same music. Mr. Man thinks this is fantastic. I think it's weird and probably at the root of the evil currently possessing teens and tweens... well, that and red dye #5.

Excuse me? You don't think they're evil? Have you listened to them? Have you observed them in their natural habitat?

Definition of "natural habitat": Planted solidly in front of the television, glued to some "reality" program created solely to rot the mind and ensure this nation never produces another world leader who doesn't run about half-naked on a stage or spout ghetto rhetoric to the unwashed masses.

Optional habitat: same as above employing the use of electronic communication media which has sapped their ability to form cohesive thought or sentence structure.

I don't have any mini-me replicas so I feel like this puts me in a more objective place to make these observations. (Don't judge - sometimes you just have to trust The Universe and that was a good call!) It's unnatural to look around a wedding reception or some other function where children were inadvertently admitted, to see 10-year olds singing along while their parents are on the dance floor fist pumpin' their beat.

I suppose an argument could be made that this is a good thing given that very soon we'll no longer be subjected to that tired "car radio fight scene" in the movies. Nonetheless, I think I have to stand by my original hypothesis that this will be the downfall of Western Civilization. We need that definitive, unblurred line drawn in the sand! The line that says, "I get to both have, and voice, opinions because I'm all grown up and you're still a know-nothing fetus so shut your ignorant mouth until you're old enough to order me a martini. And pull up your pants. You look ridiculous"

So back to the dance floor. This brings me to my next Us/Them observation. Why is it that adults are getting way more exercise now than their offspring?

"Back when we were kids..."
We couldn't get out of the house fast enough. If we sat still longer than it took to eat dinner, someone would inevitably come up with a chore for us to do. Now, near as I can tell from the shockingly ill-mannered mini-masses I hear in the supermarket, chores are something a child gets paid to do (*outrage*), and the Great Out-of-Doors is reserved for cocktail parties.

There is a point of interest here in that some childhood activities seem to have carried over into adulthood - only with a different outcome in mind. For instance, I may or may not have recently been in a tree with a 12-pack, two friends, and binoculars.

Seriously though, am I the only one who remembers that the worst possible punishment in the world was being grounded to the indoors? Being in high school and knowing that even if you did shimmy down the bedsheet to freedom, there was no possible chance of getting back in without being caught... and doing it anyway because it was totally worth it not to be inside. We walked to school until we could drive ourselves because that's where most of the fun happened in our day anyway, and it was kind of embarrassing to be seen getting dropped off if you didn't just come from the dentist. So maybe this exercise thing is all a matter of habit.

Here's my long awaited advice on how the entire world could be changed in one simple step:

Dear Owners: Yank your lazy-assed kids off the sofa and send them outside until the street lights come on. Oh! And introduce them to a vegetable. It's time they learn there are options available that aren't handed out a drive-thru window in a paper bag. Maybe if they weren't so fat they wouldn't be so loud and lazy.